Personalized medication management, including DNA testing, is extremely important for the proper management of pain because finding the right drug and dose is so vitally important. T

At the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, a presentation on the clinical effect of genotyping chronic pain patients revealed:

80% of patients reporting ADRs were shown to have poor CYP2D6 metabolism

Some methadone patients seeking higher doses were Ultra Metabolizers: proof that they were not exhibiting drug-seeking behavior

Many common pain medications require activation by an enzyme called CYP2D6 to become effective. Approximately half of patients have genes that alter the function of 2D6. Testing for these gene alterations allows for alteration of dosage regimens to compensate for altered metabolism and optimize the safety and efficacy of the opioid family of analgesics.

Without knowing your genetics, your physician may need to go through months of trial-and-error prescribing to find the right drug and dose for you.